Global meet on India’s manuscript heritage kicks off today, PM to attend on day two

PM Narendra Modi (File – ANI)

New Delhi: As a three-day first ever international conference on “Reclaiming India’s Knowledge Legacy Through Manuscript Heritage” began at Vigyan Bhawan today, the govt seeks to pave the way for building an “alliance” of stakeholders, institutions and private custodians of manuscripts from across India under the ambitious “Gyan Bharatam” project announced in the budget of 2025-26.The ministry of culture aims to develop “Gyan Bharatam” into an institutional framework on the lines of the archaeological survey of India with the aim to preserve, digitise, decode manuscripts and create a national repository through survey, documentation, conservation and digitisation of the more than one crore manuscripts located in academic institutions, museums, libraries and private collections across India. Gyan Bharatam has been allocated a budget of around Rs 482 crore for a period of six years (2024-2031).Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be addressing the conference on Friday and will be hearing the presentations of various working groups. The groups comprising experts and officials have been constituted on crucial themes ranging from ‘decipherment of ancient scripts: Indus, Gilgit and Sankha’ to dwelling on ‘manuscripts as tools of cultural diplomacy’ and legal and ethical frameworks for manuscript preservation and access. The conference will bring together 1,100 participants. According to the culture ministry, a critical outcome of the conference will be the adoption of the ‘New Delhi Declaration on Manuscript Heritage’ at the valedictory session on Saturday where home minister Amit Shah will be the chief guest.Sharing the vision for Gyan Bharatam, union culture secretary Vivek Aggarwal on Wednesday said that the eventual plan is to create a “hub-and-spoke model” wherein the ‘Gyan Bharatam’ in New Delhi will be the main hub that will continue to evolve and it will work in collaboration with regional centres across states drawn from among institutions both public and private that have expertise in the field. Standard Operating Procedures will also be developed for preserving various kinds of manuscripts.